The falcons eyes, p.79
The Falcon's Eyes, page 79
“Ragnar,” I murmured. “Of course—”
“It was not easy to orchestrate, I confess. Even I had to steel myself to the task at hand.” Then, rapidly, and with a weird, almost voluptuous eagerness and thrill, he went on, in a cadence by turns feverish and contemplative. “No, it was not easy. Not easy at all, even for me. But after a few flacons of wine, it was not hard to get the deed done. When all was set in place, I poured oil on the rush matting, ignited it, and escaped. Ragnar had prepared a mount at a designated place in the forest, as well as money for my transport and a change of clothes. Both being crucial, of course, to the plan.” Luxuriating in these details, his voice mounted in excitement as he added, “I disguised myself as a pilgrim—me, a pilgrim.” He gave a harsh laugh, “Imagine!”
But that was not what I was imagining; I was imagining the falcons’ uncomprehending eyes, the gentle doves engulfed by flames, the stench of burning feathers intermingling with that of roasting human flesh. . . . “You said someone else was with you. Who was it?” I demanded. “Whose body was found?”
“One that Ragnar had disinterred that very morning. A thief, according to Ragnar, who knew him before he was hanged for stealing some food. We dressed him in my clothes and placed my ring around his finger—my ring, on a peasant’s finger.” He chuckled at the irony. “I was able to escape almost unscathed.” He ran his finger across the scarred side of his face. “The flames were high, very high, by that time, you see, and it was not easy to make my way through the burning door.” Again, that eerie, almost needy look, as if he were seeking my praise for his ingenuity, his daring.
“I am horrified to think of what your survival cost,” I told him, my body shaking with disgust, with rage. “Your cruelty, your murderous plotting. To have killed all those creatures, to have left them tethered to their posts to burn to death, while you escaped!” I held my head in my hands, trying to dispel the image of the shrieking birds struggling to free themselves from the engulfing flames.
“So you do not approve?” he jeered. “The idea of my survival, and what it entailed, offends your delicate sensibility, your scruples. You, of all people—you who deceived me, and cursed my life, by consorting with that witch. It is because of you—your spells, your machinations—that I have never been able to have a child. A son and heir.” He slapped the glove down by the casket. “And what have you made of your life, what of your dreams of adventure, of seeing the larger world?” He cast a long, scathing glance around the scriptorium. “You have condemned yourself to this place. A place of walls and rules and silence. A place for unwanted women who have no other use. You might as well be living in a coffin.”
“I knew you were capable of cruelty,” I replied, keeping my voice level, “but to kill the creatures you nurtured and professed to have loved”—I shook my head in woe—“no, I never imagined you capable of such a heinous crime! It sickens me.” I felt a sudden desperate need to make some sense of this, to weave together all the disparate pieces from the past—everything I should have perceived, everything that had led to this hideous moment. “I saw glimpses of your cruel side, of course,” I began rapidly, passionately, “and I had heard stories from others. But I tried to discount them. From Agnes, early on. She told me you would not give Aiglantine a length of fabric to swaddle her baby. Then there was the way you treated Gallien when you blamed him for losing Vainqueur. And then, years afterward, I learned from Raoul how vengeful you were to Aiglantine after I left—how you cast her out like a wounded dog. It was a miracle that she was able to make her way here, to the abbey, after you threw her out. She was near death, wasted and ill. She came looking for her child. We did our best to care for her in her final days.”
“Her child?” He raised his brow.
“That young woman, Marie, who was with me here.” I spoke even more quickly now, and with even less restraint. “That was her daughter! Aiglantine had left her here, at the abbey, when she was an infant. The baby for whom she wanted the swaddling. But even there, you denied her the fabric, the ennobling fabric, which might have helped the child survive. You made Aiglantine grovel, even for that!” Then, even more bitterly: “But she never left the baby in the forest, as you probably wanted, and as many thought she had. She would never have done such a thing! She left the baby here, at the gate of the abbey. The nuns found her and named her Marie. Sister Clementia and I have brought up the child.”
“I watched you with the girl. She is very pretty. And very dear to you, I surmise,” he added in a chilling tone.
“She is like a daughter to me,” I said. “The most precious thing in life to me.”
“As I am the most abject thing to you.” He glowered.
“You have made yourself into the most abject thing. By your cruelty. By your evil. You are hardly even human!”
“How wrong, how utterly wrong, you are, Isabelle.” The timbre of his voice suddenly became softer, smoother—a lulling voice I recognized from the past and which, in its silky seductiveness, frightened me all the more. “I assure you I am all too human,” he said, “and as vital as ever.” He came close and ran his finger ever so gently across my cheek; I shuddered.
“There was a time when my touch did not disgust you,” he replied bitterly.
“That was another time,” I retorted. “Had I realized—”
There fell a long, harrowing pause as he continued to look at me, angrily, mockingly. Then he walked to the desk where Marie had been working. I followed at a slight distance, watching, terrified, as he let his hand linger on the leaf she had been illustrating. I came closer, frightened that he would defile it, but to my relief he merely seemed to study the images. “What would you say,” he asked, turning toward me, “if you were to learn that the blood of the vile creature who stands before you now—my blood—also flows in Marie’s veins?”
“Your blood?” I scoffed.
“It was my child Aiglantine bore.”
“You joke—that cannot be!” But the moment I uttered those words, myriad disparate pieces seemed to coalesce with harrowing logic in my mind. I thought of the fabric he had denied Aiglantine for her infant: had that been his way of punishing her for begetting a child he never wanted? Then there was the fear Aiglantine always evinced toward him—her resolute silence about the identity of Marie’s father, which I had always assumed was born out of shame. I thought of her painful reticence around Gerard during the years of my marriage, and her terrible, indeed almost inordinate, fear of displeasing him. Finally, I thought of Marie—her eyes, how like in color, and in expression, I realized now, they were to Gerard’s; her exacting nature; then of her love of falcons, of adventure. . . .
“Marie, your daughter,” I whispered, almost unable to give voice to the repugnant thought.
“Yes,” he exclaimed triumphantly, reveling in my shock. “My very own! And like me, against all odds, she, too, survived.” He turned several leaves of the manuscript before settling on a page embellished with vivid images of falcons and doves. “These are her drawings?”
“Yes.”
“Do hawks interest her?”
I nodded, too numb to utter a word.
“She is not without something of me, then,” he mused. “I find that strangely heartening.” Then, savagely, he muttered, “If only she had been a son, not a daughter! You could not even give me a healthy daughter.” He reflected on this, bitterly, before adding, “Now that you know about my child with Aiglantine, you also realize why I knew the problems we had in conceiving were not due to me. They were yours, and yours alone.” He leaned forward, closer to me, the veins at his temple throbbing; I flinched, which sparked another burst of his fury. “You were not able to bring a healthy child to life—you were cursed from the beginning, as much a witch as that creature, Anthusis, you consorted with. No, the problem was never with me—it was with you, and your womb, which were defective.”
His expression was bitterly triumphant as he had uttered those last, piercing words; he knew they had wounded me. All the while, I struggled to shield myself against his insults, but it was hard, very hard. And he had not yet finished—“But Aiglantine’s womb was not defective,” he continued. “She was ripe, and fertile. How pretty she was then, how fresh! She did not have to be coaxed and tutored in bed, as you did. She knew from the first, as you did not, how to please me.” I crumpled to the seat before the desk, my entire being reeling with hurt, fear, and incredulity—was it possible that this monster had once been my husband? That I had lived with him, that I had lain with him?
He continued even more rapidly now, and with the same bizarre self-entrancement he had shown earlier when describing his escape from the burning mews. “Yes, she was wonderfully trusting, and, at moments, appealingly afraid.” He paused, and then, with a certain repellent mock ruefulness, added, “But she did not understand the game of life. She never would, as you never will. And, of course, it became inconvenient when she got herself with child. Foolish of her to have been so careless. And even more foolish to have told me about it. She should have crept away and had it in peace, in anonymity.” He shook his head from side to side, marveling, “I came here for the king’s books, and for the queen’s letter. I never imagined I would also find my daughter.”
“She is not your daughter!” I cried, springing to my feet; my heart pounded and my hands began to shake uncontrollably. “I have brought her up. I have taught her. She has my spirit!”
“She has my blood,” he replied, striking the table with his fist. “No court of law would ever prevent me from taking her from you. Certainly no court that is under the jurisdiction of this king—for make no mistake, Isabelle, he is my king.”
“Hurt me if you like, but not her!” I pleaded. “She still has her whole life before her.” I stopped, realizing this tack would never move him; I would have to find another. I took deep breaths, forcing myself to strategize. “The queen is greatly fond of Marie,” I began, managing to steady my voice. “Take Marie from here, from us, and you risk making an enemy of the queen. I know the queen well, and for many years. She trusts me. Ask anyone here. She will never let Marie be taken from me. Or from the abbey!”
“The queen is old and has not many days left. Or so I hear.”
“She is indomitable. And she is close to her son, the king. He owes her a great deal. Without her help, he would never have become king. Without her support, even more nobles will desert him. Would you really risk that, especially now, with all that is at stake, with the defense of Gaillard?” To my relief, he seemed to consider this. “If you cross her,” I continued, “you will also cross the king. And however close you purport to be to John, you must also know his reputation for retribution.”
“I have only to bide my time then, until the queen is no more.” He shrugged. “That day will come, sooner rather than later. The old dragon is in her eighth decade. Even she cannot live forever. Once she is dead, she will be irrelevant.”
I knew all too well the terrible, undeniable truth of that last statement. “And if the king should learn who you really are?” I asked, taking another tack. “And what vile deeds you have done? That your new persona is nothing but a lie?”
“Who would tell him?” he asked. “You? Do you really think the king would believe your story—the ravings of a deluded woman, spurned by her husband and shut up in a convent? He would give it as much credence as he would the vision of some holy lunatic.”
“The queen will vouch for me,” I replied. “Then the king will have no choice but to believe I speak the truth.”
“I shall tell him how you lied to me, how you deceived me. And then I shall destroy you,” he swore. “Yes, I will destroy you, and I will make sure that your precious Marie knows that you consorted with that witch, Anthusis, during our marriage.”
“I told you long ago why I went to Anthusis—I wanted desperately to have a child. Your child. That was the reason I took her potions,” I returned, struggling to keep my voice from wavering. “And that is what I would tell Marie.”
“Once again you lie—as you lied to me again and again. You know in your heart you are far from spotless, that you committed a sin against God by preventing yourself from getting with child—a sin that forever cursed my marriage bed. What will the abbess Mathilda, and the virtuous Sister Clementia say, then? How will they, and Marie, feel about you then?”
“They would never, ever believe you!” I cried.
“I am not so sure.” His lips settled into a menacing smile. “When I tell them the real story, detail by detail—about the amulet you left, about all your lies—do you think you would still be welcome at this holy place?”
I could not bring forth a single word; all life seemed to have drained from me.
“Now, for the king’s books,” he concluded triumphantly. “Time presses. And before I leave, I must deliver the message to the queen—fortuitous, is it not? That will give me occasion to assess the queen’s health myself.”
I handed him the cord and watched as he strapped it around the casket.
“Tell me, Isabelle,” he said, turning to me as he thrust his hands into his gloves. “Have any of these been illustrated by Marie herself?”
“Many,” I murmured.
“Good. There is some justice in that, then.” He took up the casket. “Now, to the queen. I can find my own way, I assure you.” As he came to the door, he turned to face me: “Remember, when the queen is dead, I shall return. Then we shall see whom Marie really belongs to.”
Chapter 109
I could not move; I scarcely breathed. I shivered with cold—it was nearly dusk and the air was icy—yet my body felt afire; afire with shock, and shame, and fury, and terror.
I crumpled to the bench before Marie’s desk and covered my face, trying to blot out the memory of his strange, gleaming eyes and of his strange new voice. I wanted to die; I wanted to flee. I wanted to erase the memory of each revelation he had bitterly, yet triumphantly, recounted. I ached to awaken as one would from a nightmare—ecstatic and relieved that the nocturnal terrors had merely been chimeras. But what I had just seen was no chimera. This was a monster come to life, and he—this monster—had once been my husband. What had just appeared before me was not Gerard but another being entirely: the soldier Vautière, “The Vulture,” the infamous henchman of King John who had ravaged the abbeys and villages of Ireland and northern England.
Of the man I had once desired, admired, and lain with, there seemed no vestige: in his stead, a being so corroded by bitterness, thwarted ambition, and lust for vengeance that he seemed more fiend than mortal. Yet “I am as vital as ever” he had told me with that searing gaze; but now his vitality would be turned toward revenge upon me, toward tracking me down as he had once tracked down wild creatures in the forest or soaring birds in the sky. I would only be safe as long as the queen lived; at the moment of her death, all would change. “Then I shall destroy you,” he had told me in that terrifying voice. “Yes, I shall destroy you.” All of a sudden I recalled how, years ago, he had announced to me, “I am not a vengeful man.” How little he knew himself!
And what of Marie, my darling Marie? Should I ever have guessed that she was his child, the daughter of this monster? Should I ever have discerned that her spirited curiosity, and her obsession with falcons, might have sprung from him? I had come to think of her as so much my own child that I almost imagined those traits as having been inherited from me—or, latently, from some unrevealed side of Aiglantine.
My reeling mind then turned to her—to pitiful, suffering Aiglantine, and the secrets she had carried to her grave; then to all the facets of her submerged self that I had either never perceived or had misconstrued. Never could she let me know the painful truth of her past; never could she let her daughter know the circumstances of her conception, and the dreadful character of her father. How crypt-like she had been in her ability to conceal! I thought of the day when Sigibert had been apprehended in the forest, for instance, and how, confronted by Gerard, she had given away nothing. A “cool dissembler” I had called her almost proudly, imagining she had acquired this skill from me. Little did I know how experienced she was—even more experienced than I—in keeping secrets.
And yet, in my heart, I knew she loved me dearly, and that any secret she had kept from me was simply out of shame—a deep, unfathomable shame for which I could only pity her; a sin for which I could now only forgive her. How fearful she must have been that I would one day discover the truth of Marie’s parentage; that I would think less of her, that I might condemn her, that I might no longer trust her. But I knew now, as I had never known so completely, that it was never she, but Gerard, who had transgressed. He had done what Hugh had hoped to do during the hunt—hence, I realized now, Gerard’s almost inordinate rage that evening.
What twisted pleasure it must have given Gerard to see her serve me, his new wife, and how discomfited he must have been to see us grow close, to see us become friends, when not so long before our marriage, he had used her for his pleasure. Yet that deed, too, he had wielded in his arsenal against me, though it had not been enough for him to describe how he had seduced her. No—he had saved even crueler anecdotes as weapons of humiliation: even in bed, he had told me, I had not compared to her. Here, as well, he not only delighted in seeing me suffer, but wanted me also to infer something quite specific: despite my noble name, my education, and my intellect, I had failed in that other, primal, domain—just as I had failed to bear his child.
I thought of those years of pregnancy and childbirth, and of my hurt when Gerard would insinuate that the problem was with me and my inability to bear a healthy child. All the while Aiglantine must have realized that his words, however painful, may have evinced some truth; for she had borne him a hearty baby girl.
Little by little, as if deciphering a coded message, I continued to unravel those years at Ravinour. I thought of his pleasure in swathing me in silk—a mere scrap of which he had denied her baby—and how, watching us, Aiglantine would become so quiet, so grave; how poignantly grateful, and wistful, she had been when, before my leaving Ravinour, I had given her those lengths of silk. . . . And what of his fury, the day when he discovered her wearing my bracelets? That, too, I now understood. No wonder he had resisted having her attend me in the birthing room.
